Her words came out in one long ribbon of questions which she uttered without pausing for breath, and by the end I was laughing down the line at her.

‘It was fine,’ I said. ‘He was nice. We did get along. I am quite cross with you, but I suppose I’ll get over it.’ I hoped that Clio would hear that I was joking.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I know it was a bit of a low-down mean trick, but I couldn’t think of any other way to get the two of you to spend some time together on your own. Admit it, Leah. If I’d just suggested that you hook up with him for the afternoon you’d have turned me down flat.’

That was true, I knew, and I was slightly surprised that Clio knew this too. Was I that transparent? Or maybe it was that Clio was starting to understand the way I ticked. I much preferred this idea because it matched my theory that there was a kind of weird understanding between us.

‘And I knew he liked you,’ Clio continued coyly.

I liked this idea less. It suggested that the two of them had been talking about me behind my back, and I’d had enough of that kind of thing to last me a lifetime. I hated that there was the merest chance that Marlon and Clio had cooked up a plan to catch me like a fly in a spider’s web, although from Marlon’s reaction to the ‘not-date’ I gathered he’d been as much a victim of Clio’s scheming as I had.

‘How did you know that?’ I asked suspiciously.

‘I’ve known him forever,’ Clio replied. ‘So I could just tell, in the way a girl can always spot these things.’

I knew then that there’d been no giggling conversations when I wasn’t there to hear them. Clio had just relied on her trusty female intuition, and if she had been right, then talking Marlon into a trip to the coast wouldn’t have been so very challenging.

‘So?’ said Clio, anxious now for more details. ‘How did it go?’

It was like being transported back in time to being a teenager again. Even though I’d only known Clio for two minutes and her probing should probably have been an intrusion into my personal space, it felt completely natural, like we’d been friends forever.

‘Actually, it was great,’ I confided.

I could hear Clio squealing down the other end of the line. ‘I knew it!’ she interrupted.

‘Are you going to let me get a word in?’ I asked.

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Carry on.’